Screen Gems

Making a good movie is harder than it seems.

By: Elise Nakhnikian

The lush cinematography and breathtaking fight scenes in House of Flying Daggers, starring Zhang Ziyi (above), set the film apart from the rest of 2004’s movie offerings.

   With the usual spate of weak summer movies about to descend and an unusually lame bunch of spring ones petering out, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a movie good or bad.
   It seems counterintuitive for something that involves sitting quietly in the dark — more and more often alone and in front of a TV or computer screen — but movies are essentially a communal experience. They bring us closer together, helping us make sense of ourselves, each other, and sometimes even life in general. And sometimes, as Preston Sturges’ 1941 masterpiece Sullivan’s Travels reminds us, they just give us a couple of hours of blissful release, wrapping us in a dream that muffles real life.
   But that’s true of any kind of storytelling, of course. What’s specific to movies is the way they tell stories, through a rich mix of images, sound, dialogue and action.
   Depicting their worlds rather than asking us to imagine them, movies take on a density of detail that make them a particularly good way to learn about a person or place. Two of my favorite recent movies, Born Into Brothels and My Architect, let me visit places I would never otherwise have seen, and gave me a sense of how certain people lived. 2001’s Fast Runner, a gorgeous Inuit fable, was a day pass to a world that no longer exists, while animated gems like The Incredibles and The Triplets of Belleville take us to marvelous locations that exist only in the minds of their creators.
   That sense of reality in movies is so strong that there’s usually something to like in even a mediocre one. In fact, if just one thing about a movie is striking enough, I may end up loving it even if everything else about it is weak. 2002’s Hero and last year’s House of Flying Daggers, director Zhang Yimou’s masterful first passes at making martial arts movies, had fairly uninteresting revenge plots, but their sumptuous visuals and imaginatively choreographed fight scenes made them a feast for the eyes. And, though I disliked the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which took its title from Sullivan’s Travels but had none of the original’s affection for its characters, I thought it made a great CD if you just closed your eyes and listened to the American roots music on the soundtrack. Similarly, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room has almost nothing to recommend in terms of filmmaking technique, but its chilling view of the Enron scandal as part of the fabric of American corporate and political life made it one of the most memorable movies I’ve seen lately.
   Probably my favorite films of all time are the screwball comedies of the 1930s and ’40s, classics like His Girl Friday, The Lady Eve and Adam’s Rib. I never get tired of the formula, which involves watching two delectable people slide inevitably into love, fighting it — and each other — all the way. The dialogue’s as snappy as the clothing, and the actors are among the most charismatic stars ever to scurry across a screen. But what made me fall in love with those movies as a girl was their view of the battle of the sexes. This is no bitter, joyless feud. It’s a playful tug of war, and it goes on so long because the players are perfectly matched.
   A good horror movie, like last year’s Dawn of the Dead remake (nothing like a good zombie movie to get the heart pumping), gives your primal fears a workout from the safety of your theater seat. And a sensitive love story about a couple separated by war, like this year’s Brothers or last year’s A Very Long Engagement, can deliver a more powerful antiwar message than a doctrinaire documentary.
   These movies don’t have much else in common, but all are vivid, original works made by people with a passion for storytelling. Except for O Brother, all create characters and settings you believe in, and in all of them the actors appear to be revealing the truth about their characters.
   Unlike plays, which generally rely on declamatory speeches, good movies mirror the rhythm of life. That almost always means using short bursts of dialogue punctuated by action. A long speech in a movie brings the momentum to a screeching halt unless it’s handled with enormous skill, like the killers’ soliloquies in Pulp Fiction.
   But the main thing good movies have in common is that they’re never predictable. Even if the story is one you’ve heard countless times before, a great movie finds a fresh way to tell it. And that means you’re always unsure of what will happen next and often surprised and delighted by seemingly minor things — just like in real life.